Our Work

Today’s web thrives on a wide variety of devices and networks: laptops, phones, tablets, but also TVs, fridges, and glasses! All these devices have specific requirements in terms of bandwidth and image resolution. Serving the same content in such different circumstances can make your site slow to load, difficult to read, and expensive to download.

Web designers need a simple solution to serve the right images to the right users, in the fastest, most economical way possible. This is how Maiko, our new image processing service, was born.

Feeling overwhelmed? We haven’t even discussed Android yet!

Maiko offers a comprehensive solution: it hosts, processes, and delivers your images transparently. Once your assets have been uploaded to Maiko, you can call them in the right size, resolution, and image format on-the-fly. Maiko generates the requested file in real-time, right from your source. It then distributes it to your end user over its worldwide full-SSDCDN.

Big screen, big bucks, big Maiko! Please your Pro users…

This makes changing images on your site as easy as changing a font size or a colour in your CSS. Change the source, and everything updates right away! Maiko accepts designer-friendly formats, such as Photoshop and Illustrator. It serves files in all standard formats, including the super-optimised WEBP. No intermediary exports and no alternate files means no confusion, no time lost, and no compromises in quality.

The oh-so-cute Maiko is your site’s best friend. But she’s a ninja against bloat!

Maiko’s intuitive web interface belies its advanced image processing engine, developed in-house by Wollzelle. If you can use the web, you can use Maiko. Fully documented URL parameters, and a complete JavaScript API, are available to all developers. This makes it a snap to integrate Maiko into your own web application. (A RESTAPI is in the works, and coming soon.)

Just how robust is Maiko? It is already powering high-profile sites for the luxury fashion industry. In January 2014 alone, it served 350+ GB of data! Today, by opening it to the general public, we are making this powerful new tool available to freelancers and agencies of all sizes.

Reddit lies at the centre of today’s web. A watering hole for geeks, journalists, and trendsetters, it kindles everything from fashion fads to national security debates. Information flows so fast, and so deep, that it’s easy to miss: blink, and your bearings are lost, scroll, and you’ve missed a key comment…

When Peter Purgathofer, the well-known technologist and educator, asked us to collaborate on a radically different Reddit client, we jumped at the chance. Our goals were threefold: provide an intuitive visual representation of the conversation, highlight contributions from friends and contacts, and facilitate voting. Simply put, we wanted to make Reddit useful again.

Built exclusively for iOS 7 on iPad, Biscuit uses an infinite canvas to lay out conversations, and their various branches, endowing each dimension with clear meaning. It invites users to explore threads visually, and to dive into each tangent, without ever allowing them to lose sight of the main topic.

Comments from friends and contacts are automatically highlighted to emphasise trustworthy opinions. Last but not least, voting, the key ingredient of Reddit’s alchemy, is always but a swipe away.

A complex engine ticks behind the scenes to enhance the user’s experience, always preloading, caching, and parsing to keep things fluid and up-to-date. Full Markdown support encourages active and constructive participation in the debate, by removing any barriers to the writing of complex comments. (And of course, it wouldn’t be a Reddit client without a ಠ_ಠ button!)

By focusing on the conversation and its flow, and facilitating interaction with others, Biscuit hopes to turn Reddit’s swamp back into fertile ground for thought. It is an opinionated design, and one we are very proud of.

We are psyched to unveil a brand new Wollzelle.com, the first major update to our site since the previous design was introduced in 2005.

We have now moved to a multi-page format, and greatly expanded our portfolio section. The brand new Work pages will walk you through our star projects. They feature previously unseen high-resolution images, pulled straight from our voluminous archives.

The site has been optimised for touch screens and retina displays. Whenever possible, we have gone back in time and updated our older blog posts, so your browsing experience should stay crisp and clean, even as you travel in time.

Speaking of crisp and clean, all images on Wollzelle.com are now served by Maiko. We’ve been extensively relying on her internally, and hope to introduce her to you in full over the next few weeks…

Wollzelle is thrilled to announce it has been chosen by Galerie Gernot Rammer to build its much anticipated online presence.

The clean design of this website is accentuated by crisp graphics. Its focus on layout through typography and negative space enables the artwork to shine.

Fully integrated e-commerce capabilities allow collectors to seamlessly scrutinise and purchase the works they are interested in. A wide array of supporting materials, such as prints and books, completes the offer. Of course, social features facilitate interactions with the Gallery at every step.

Underneath its glossy and inviting appearance, the site is powered by a full-featured engine that means real business. Inventory management, tracking and statistics, even CRM, have all been custom-built and integrated by Wollzelle right into the platform.

The site will launch with an ambitious project dubbed Fankultur macht Kunst, that explores fan culture in Austria through the complex prism of football. Supported by star players and official organisations alike, the artworks by renowned artist Thomas Strobl offer a unique glimpse into the infectious experience of rooting together for a team. Far away from football cliches, this life-affirming exhibit celebrates sport, social interactions and that very special link that unites us all.

The site will launch with an exciting project dubbed Fankultur macht Kunst. It explores fan culture in Austria through the prism of football, and is supported by star players and official organisations alike. The artworks by renowned artist Thomas Strobl offer a unique glimpse into the infectious experience of rooting together for a team.

Be sure to RSVP on Facebook for a chance to participate in the vernissage, taking place on June 6 at 7 PM at the Wiener Sportklub! It’s the perfect event to get in the mood and meet like-minded Art lovers.

The frustration of store locators

Back in 2008, some of our clients looked into adding store locators to their sites. We quickly got frustrated with the existing solutions, though, that seemed extremely inefficient and kept asking users for information their browser already knew, resulting in long drop-down menus and complex forms.

It was all so terribly old-fashioned, that we set out to develop a unique technology, pulling every modern string, from mapping APIs to geolocation, to smooth and simplify the process. Our technology would have to be fast, flexible and self-sufficient, so that it could be leveraged by any website.

The modern web makes it all possible given sufficient time, engineering effort, and focus on design — the very skills we hone for our own web applications. After a few weeks, we had a working prototype, which we have been refining ever since.

A global success

Today, our technology manages thousands of locations for prestigious clients in all industries, like Luxury Fashion brand or Trodat.

Our approach is to keep the process intuitive and to predict the user’s wishes at every step, by using technology to filter out irrelevant options. Because our store locator is a centrally hosted solution, every customer benefits from our ongoing improvements. This enables us to offer features that would be difficult for a lone company to develop, test and deploy on its own. Chief amongst them are touch optimisations for mobile users, transparent conversion between American and metric units, and full support for up to eight languages.

Introducing Trodat

Enter Trodat, whom you must know if you have an office or use stamps. The Trodat group is headquartered in Wels, Austria, and employs over 1100 workers worldwide, manufacturing business essentials from the humble self-inking rubber stamp to laser engraving machines.

The Trodat website is the latest in line to include a Wollzelle-driven store locator. From the moment the page loads, it has located you and presents a list of your nearby online stores. Indeed, even if it does business online, a nearby store will speak your language and understand your culture.

If you would prefer to visit your friendly Trodat dealer, a switch shows you a list of physical locations, still laid out by distance, and neatly arranged on an interactive map. That map is totally customised to blend into the site, from type to colours, and graphically optimised to present data that is relevant to you — the centre, scale, display type, etc. have been preconfigured automatically.

Of course, you may be looking up dealers while traveling abroad, or on an older machine that does not support geolocation. When all else fails, we still offer intuitive controls to manually filter locations by type, country or specialty.

In a nutshell, that’s how we got Trodat’s stamp of approval. Next time you feel the urge to buy a stamp, you can surf safe in the knowledge we have your back — all around the web.

Peter Rigaud, the noted photographer, has been a client of ours for ten years. Over time, we have created, refined and updated his brand and his website, accompanying changes in the Web. We have seen him grow more popular and demand for his work increase over time, but his brand and image have stayed true to their fundamental concepts. This gradual evolution of both medium and content is a rare creative opportunity in our fast-paced industry.

Today, we are pleased to announce a new website for Peter, one that takes his clean, simple brand even further by continuing to focus on white space, harmonious typography and straightforward navigation. Peter wanted the site to disappear from view, and to put his photos front and centre, which we achieved by focusing on a tight colour palette, and completely flattening the menus.

This new site is the latest step in a slow maturing process that started ten years ago when we designed Peter’s brand and developed his first portfolio. It marks the total removal of any proprietary plugins or legacy CMS, allowing the artist and his team to drive website updates personally, safe in the knowledge their content can be accessed on computers, laptops and smartphones.

Fluxiom ensures the photos always look their best, sharp and properly resized. This allows Peter to present his work in new and better ways, that rival professional print layouts. It also means the site is backed by a redundant CDN, ensuring images display quickly and reliably, wherever users are located.

The new website also introduces a news section, featuring recent shots, and allows visitors to look up images by face and place, which magazine editors on a deadline will no doubt appreciate. Artistic projects, such as « Please photograph … for me » also feature prominently, reminding us all that Peter’s brand and body of work go beyond the commercial.

Capturing Wollzelle

Having admired Peter’s work for so long, we invited him to visit our office in Vienna’s 6th district, and to capture the unique atmosphere of our traditional « Altbau ». Results of the experience can be seen below, and it suffices to say a great time was had by all…

We hope you enjoy discovering Peter’s website as much as we love working with him!

Quoted as being “The Champions League of design” the competition claims to honor top international achievements that are already setting tomorrow’s standards today. The German Design Award is bestowed in recognition of outstanding achievements in the fields of product design and communication design.

Update 02/2012: Publication just arrived :)

From its simple premise, « gaming belongs to the fabric of contemporary life », Global Player explores the thrilling world of casinos: art, food, fashion and travel lie at the core of a unique high-end experience.

The online edition is a natural pendant to the printed reference magazine. It focuses on current trends and topics, and keeps readers abreast of what’s new and what’s hot as the year, and their own travels, unfold.

It was, therefore, very much designed with the mobile experience in mind, and has been specially enhanced for iPhone use.

Once added added to the user’s home screen, the site behaves every bit like a native « App », with the added benefit of requiring no installation and no downloads.

By blending seamlessly with the iPhone’s interface it offers a direct portal to the world of international entertainment — with interesting articles to boot. On the plane, on the train, at the hotel: anywhere a data connection is available.

The site is so up-to-the-minute that its administrative back-end, also developed in-house at wollzelle, has been specially designed for the iPad, enabling journalists and gaming personalities to publish articles, photos and titbits as events are unfolding in any of the group’s properties around the world! The decentralised newsroom is no longer a thing of the future.

To provide an optimal experience in any country around the world, the site is transparently served through a complex Content Delivery Network (CDN) that automatically picks the closest geographical source for the data. Fluxiom takes care of streaming and broadcasting images as they arrive, so that they fit right into the magazine’s virtual pages at the right size and compression level.

Why not try out the site for yourself on your iPhone or computer? We would love to hear your comments. And if you like what you read, remember you can also interact on Facebook.

Downloads

In September 2009, we had the honour of working with the world-renowned St. Gilgen International School to craft a radically new and fresh approach to academic branding, that would reflect the school’s unique stance on quality education.

Encouraged by the success of its online platform, the school recently approached us with another challenge: translating their highly dynamic and fluid website into a printed brochure, making sure we took advantage of all this high-touch medium has to offer — permanence, high-resolution images, gorgeous type…

The resulting brochure retains the visual language we introduced with the site, starting with the strong, unabashedly traditional crest, and the constant layering of frames and perspectives.

By putting images in close spacial relationship, we enhance both their kinship and their dissonance, thereby inviting the reader to imagine the stories and events that make them go together.

Nothing, not even a multimedia website, replaces the vivid colours of the mind and we made sure the imagery both represented and suggested the reality of the school: there are no clip-arts or bromides to be found there!

While the medium may not be all the message, it certainly accounts for a lot of it. Therefore, the school’s core values of excellence and self actualisation are evidenced in the materials used for the brochure. Thick, tactile paper and highly saturated inks help the photos, drawings and type spring to life in ways that a vertical screen could never afford. This brochure is like the values it promotes: modern but deeply rooted in tradition and, most of all, here to stay!

We are delighted to see the new St. Gilgen aesthetic, which wollzelle originally devised as a primarily online language, progressively evolve into the school’s trade dress, the sure sign of a solid and flourishing brand that has found its one true voice.

Our parents would be proud: we’ve made the books! Well, one of our super-special clients has, at least, and we could not be more thrilled by this fun and unexpected surprise! You guessed it, the Wiener Hauskrankenpflege strikes again…

The book, which came out only last week, has been released by the Archiworld Co.. It focuses on signage systems from all around the world, and presents them in a way that is both accurate and fun to dive into, which makes it the perfect gift for your favourite designer or type nerd this season.

As you may remember from our last post, we accompanied the WHS in their recent move, and helped them design an original signage system, focusing on making their vast and impressive office fun and intuitive to navigate, for both staff and visitors.

This project entailed a mix of typography, design and interior architecture with a dash of psychology, building upon our various specialties and interests here at wollzelle. We are therefore all the more delighted it clicked and are looking forwards to discovering the dozen more that are presented in the book!

Our thanks to the WHS for their support, as always, and to the fine folks at Archiworld for thinking of us.

Its international jury is comprised of well-known creatives and leaders of the industry, and the award covers the crème de la crème of graphic design, meaning illustration, information design and typography to the exclusion of multimedia and other less clearly defined works.

Today, we are delighted to announce we were selected amongst the 63 shortlisted projects, out of 447 entries submitted by this year’s 206 participants from all over the world — the United States, India, Croatia and beyond in addition to neighbouring countries such as Germany and Switzerland.

This means wollzelle is featured in the 2010 edition of the Awards book, a gorgeous booklet that condenses the best in design over the past two years.

Our winning project was the WHS Lagebericht 2008, an unusual publication combining the traditional fixings of an annual report with original photography and engaging copy whose release marked the first of many award-winning projects for our esteemed client.

The ceremony was held in Vienna’s Museumsquartier, and a great time was had by all, networking and discovering the work of our peers.

Our thanks go out to Design Austria and the Awards jury for thinking of us and and deeming our work worthy of such recognition. As always, our most heartfelt gratitude to the great team at the WHS for affording us such freedom in preparing their projects.

The Wiener Hauskrankenpflege and wollzelle share a rich history of breakthroughs and creativity. From paper to collaterals all the way through signage, it has been our pleasure and honour to push the boundaries of corporate communication.

How to store trophies in ball form

Over the years, we have had the honour of receiving accolades from our peers in the industry, and the pleasure to thus spread our client’s message further.

Continuing this long tradition, we are thrilled to announce we won a Gold award at Momentum 10 last week, for the aforementioned WHS Leitsystem, an innovative signage system we implemented at the WHS’s new headquarters, to guide visitors efficiently through a vast building, all the while keeping pressure and administrative jargon to a strict minimum.

And the winner is…

Needless to say, we are thrilled to receive our second Momentum award in two years, and in the very coveted “Aesthetics” category to boot. Competition was steep, and we do wish to grab the occasion to tip our hats to the other contestants.

Romina Iannuzzi and Thomas Pamminger

Of course, no awards ceremony would be complete without a party, and a good time was had by all. We have published a short album on wollzelle’s brand new Facebook page, but, for the ultimate in suspense, here is the big reveal in glorious Technicolor! Designers hold their breath…

To wrap up, we would like to thank our friends and partners at the WHS, without whom this project would not exist. We appreciate their continued support and their trust in letting us develop wild concepts for them. It means the world to us!

The Wiener Hauskrankenpflege’s 2009 Annual Report is causing quite a stir nationally! It has recently been awarded the first place in the NGOs category of the Austrian Annual Reports Awards (AAA). Run by Trend magazine for 22 years, the AAAs recognise annual reports that excel in both style and substance. Their jury is composed of independent businesspeople, and its grading system has been recognised for its clarity and transparency.

2009 was a key year for the WHS. It was a year of change and transformation for this worthy, time-trusted Viennese institution. Therefore, we are doubly happy that their message is being broadcast to the magazine’s 300 000 regular readers across Austria, thereby increasing the recognition of their brand, message and values.

Featuring original photography, hand-drawn graphs and refined type, this report encapsulates all that the WHS stands for: relatable, straightforward, human.

With its new identity, new offices and now increased national recognition of their accomplishments, the WHS is successfully answering the challenges of the XXI^st^ century, and we could not be happier. We at wollzelle would like to thank the WHS for their trust over the years.

Also, a tip of the hat to our partners in crime who helped the report see the light of day: Bösmüller, who turned our digital files into beautiful print, Wolfgang Kühnelt, who helped shaping the copy for the report, and Franco Winter who brought to life the many portraits that enliven and shape the report.

Learn more

It seems we reported on the WHS annual report for 2008 only yesterday. Since then, a lot has happened for this upstanding institution, and long time client of wollzelle, including the massive consolidation of four separate offices into a building of their own — designed afresh, no less.

Because changing buildings is also about changing perspectives, and finding enriching new ways to work together, we made the move, and the people behind it, the star of this year’s show.

One of the most striking elements of the “Lagebericht 2009,” as it is known to the locals, is the cover, which also acts as its packaging. Reading the document entails tearing away a strip of paper, as if to open a box, thereby physically introducing the reader to the report’s salient themes: movement, discoveries, collaboration. While the outside features an image of the previous WHS headquarter, the inside offers an exploration of the institution’s new surroundings, immediately rewarding interaction and engaging the eye.

Index of contentsContentDiagrammsTitle openerDetails

While the predominantly green colour palette obeys the WHS’ branding guidelines and immediately dispels any uncomfortable — and inaccurate — associations with retirement homes, hospitals and illness, the daring typography breaks the report’s clear structure into legible and attractive chunks. The clean sans-serif-based layout is peppered throughout with hand-written titles, pencilled graphs and flat saturated colours to convey a sense of perspective and energy, without sacrificing mathematical precision where it is needed.

Our collaboration with Franco Winter, brought to life the many portraits that enliven and shape the report, in stark contrast with last year’s urban still lives. After celebrating some of the organisation’s most iconic and representative clients, we have opted to focus on its administrators and caregivers without whom none of this machinery could be set in motion. Staff are depicted in their everyday setting, performing the very relatable tasks of carrying papers, enjoying a cup of tea or peeking at the sunny views outside the window, carrying on the document’s overall message. It should be noted that, continuing our tradition, all these snapshots are genuine, proving once again that authenticity never goes out of style.

Last Sunday the best of graphic design, illustration and multimedia design in Europe were honoured at the European Design Awards Ceremony in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. This ceremony is the crowning event of the ED-Festival, a 3-day conference organised around lectures given by speakers and graphic design celebrities from all over Europe. The festival travels every year to a new city in Europe. After Athens, Stockholm, and Zurich, Rotterdam hosted the festival from 28 to 30 May 2010. Images from the Award Ceremony.

About the award

The European Design Awards is the comprehensive annual awards organization acknowledging the best of graphic design, illustration and multimedia design in Europe. It is based on a collaboration of 14 prestigious communication design magazines in Europe who have taken upon them to support and promote the event. Representatives of these magazines compose the jury: 2+3D (PL), Design Austria (AT), Design Week (UK), +design (GR), Elephant (Int), étapes: (FR), Grafik Tasarim (TR), idpure (CH), KAK (RU), Novum (DE), Progetto Grafico (IT), TYPO (CZ), Visual(ES), BNO Vormberichten (NL).

Architects and designers share a common set of goals: providing novel and memorable solutions to life’s everyday problems. Whether their work is about creating spaces or what goes into them, their craft lies at the intersection of art and technology.

In this light, we are doubly happy to finally share two sites we designed for architecture firms: Raumkunst and Dennis Lems were we also featured the process a while ago.

Considering our own architectural background (Christina and I both studied architecture) we always appreciate the challenge of transposing an architect’s logic and his emotional palette into the virtual world, from brick and mortar to zeros and ones.

Because buildings are statements, and part of an architect’s brand, we decided to feature them front and centre. Even though both sites speak wholly different visual languages, they are united by the lavish use of photography, from magnified details that emphasise craft to wide shots that highlight proportions.

Both sites feature a strong, directive site structure and guide the visitor through a clearly defined tour of services, past accomplishments and portraits. Each section, in effect, creates a space to be interacted with.

Both domains are built upon our custom mix of standards-based technologies, as well as our trusty image processing back-ends, fluxiom and ImageGeisha, to allow for quick and painless updates as projects come and go.

The Wiener Hauskrankenpflege have recently merged their four separate offices into a newly refurbished five story building in Vienna’s twelfth district. We are honoured to report they turned to wollzelle to design an original wayfinding system that would match their brand, echo their personality and, of course, get staff and visitors to their destination as painlessly as possible.

To reflect the brand’s caring, relatable personality, we opted for warm hues and a geometric, open typeface. Furthermore, we forewent signage pomposity in favour of a straightforward, idiomatic style that draws its inspiration from regional sayings and mannerisms, raising the occasional chuckle and making an official building feel that much more like a home. Its logical colour palette and straightforward family of pictograms can be easily extended as the organisation adds new services, moves existing ones, or even adds an entirely new wing to the building.

The Process

Below is a peek at the many plans, diagrams and mock-ups we wallpapered our office with to arrive at the final result. We used multiple complementary techniques from blueprinting to 3D modelling, to cover all our bases and approach the same problems from multiple perspectives:

Laying out the flow and logic of each floorWorkers were provided with detailed mounting plansAn overview of the full pictorial system we developed

Final design

Below are some images of the signage system in action. More shots can be seen on our flickr photostream.

A no-nonsense approach to information in the LobbyThe Lobby in perspective | “Come on in!” door signroom“Enquire here,” at the Reception Desk“Let’s talk about it” says the meeting room doorThe Psychology officesNo office is complete without a kitchenette“Where things happen” proclaims the Event RoomA brief floor directory and the door to the IT room

The Wiener Hauskrankenpflege 2008 annual report, which we introduced on this very blog only a few weeks ago, has just won a silver award at the 2009 Momentum event.

For those of you keeping count, this does indeed mean we have gone full metal, after receiving both bronze and gold from other juries for this particular work.

Needless to say, we are thrilled and honoured by this show of support from our peers in the industry.

The award ceremony, much like the trophy itself, in fact, was a ball. A great time was had by all, the highlights of which we wanted to share with our readers, who unfortunately could not attend, but whose continued enthusiasm and support made this very project possible.

We dedicate this prize to you !

Stocking up on cool drinks for the hot evening aheadThe air is heavy with anticipation as the winners are announcedModerator Gerald Votava never missed a beat, WHS Chairwoman Evelyn Weismüller and Thomas PammingerWinners show it all after the ceremonyOur award partakes of a celebratory drink

The American Design Awards has just released the list of its 2009 Summer Semi Annual Design Contest winners. From among 1,400 participants 49 were awarded with the Award of Design Excellence for outstanding design achievements. We are proud to announce that wollzelle won 3rd place at the American Design Awards for the WHS Annual Report.

Next to Gold at the 20th International GALAXY Awards 2009 and the nomination for the Momentum ’09 Award (we still keep fingers crossed on this one) this is our 3rd award for this design work and we are more than overwhelmed with all the positive feedback.

Over 580 entries from 21 countries were submitted to participate at this years 20th International GALAXY Awards 2009.

We are pleased to announce that wollzelle received Gold for the WHS Annual Report 2008, category: annual report, NPOs.

The Grand Winner in the category of Annual Reports is Bertelsmann AG. Jung von Matt won the top honor, Best of Show, on behalf of the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra for their dynamic publicity campaign.

We are very excited and like to thank Evelyn Weismüller, CEO of the Wiener Hauskrankenpflege, and her team for the great partnership.

About the annual report

The WHS’ 2008 annual report is part official document part catalogue, showing both the human and financial aspects of this respected non-profit organization, in a single go, and reflects the warmth and energy that radiate from the institution and empower its staff.

Each still life (taken at their clients homes) reflecting the everyday reality of those the WHS supports. Each shot is both a work of art in itself, and a powerful testimonial of life in Vienna today. Strong type structures the pages and links together the various sections of the report.

Designing the annual report 2008 was a very exciting process and you can find more details about it in an earlier post.

About the client

The Wiener Hauskrankenpflege (WHS) approaches communication seriously. By making themselves known, and by interacting with people of all ages, they reach out to potential new clients, but also further the cause of affordable, quality home care that empowers elderly patients and helps them enjoy their lives to the fullest in spite of the ailments of age.

About the award

The Awards Competition is sponsored by MerComm, Inc., founded in 1987 with the principal purpose of advancing the arts and sciences of communications in an international arena. The organization strives to establish and promote high standards of individual and collective achievement by way of recognizing the multi-disciplines involved in professional communications.

The St. Gilgen International School offers a novel perspective on education by immersing students in a unique setting, the typically Austrian village of St. Gilgen, and helping them shape their minds and personalities through repeated interaction with this pristine environment, as well as the thriving community it fosters.

Much like St. Gilgen, the School, and St. Gilgen, the village, are immersive experiences, we at wollzelle wanted the institution’s website to draw the visitor in a unique, interactive, self-paced adventure. Building upon powerful cutting-edge technologies like Flash 10 (including the new 3D API) and HTML 5, the site allows the visitor to experience for himself the sights and sounds of this jewel of the Wolfgangsee. At St. Gilgen, the school is the village, and the village is the school.

The project takes roots in the output of photographers, painters and writers whose works were instrumental in crafting the school’s original vision. We set up a fluid creative process, around a dialogue between the school’s founder, a renowned architect by day, and wollzelle’s creative think-tank. Throughout our brainstorming sessions, we defined the ideal visitor experience, and balanced our client’s dream with our own views on design and interactivity.

The result of this unique process has little to do with your average business web site. Instead, we like to think of it as an art project, an experience, a true reflection of what we felt during our own stays at St. Gilgen, of the school’s latent and patent views on education. Much like the school allows students to develop and expand their minds over time, the site evolves and progressively deepens, the longer the visitor explores it.

Creating a truly immersive experience requires skilful blending of images and sound, which we achieved in two complementary ways. Throughout the web site, context-appropriate sound effects, taken live at St. Gilgen, allow the visitor to associate a sound, a feeling, with the environment they find themselves in. For example, the visit of the school is accompanied by sound-bites taken from classrooms or the school’s central plaza. Of course, we have taken image and sound all the way to video as well, by filming a special school tour, headed by the webmaster himself. This sequence walks prospective parents and students throughout the school, as well as throughout the school’s philosophy and values.

Unlike many educational institutions, St. Gilgen opened its doors wide, allowing us to delve deep into its history, interview current students and highlight the many little architectural details that give the place its soul. Indeed, History is also a key part of the school’s personality. Did you know, for example, that the administration building once was the summer residence of Marie Ebner-Eschenbach?

Visitors in a hurry can access a convenient PDF page, from which all documentation, forms and, generally speaking, printed matter related to the school, can be downloaded in a single click. This synoptic view gives immediate access to application procedures, learning processes, teacher bios and more, thereby replacing the need to refer to a bulky paper brochure.

Music is part of the site’s quintessential experience. The theme song, typical of the salzkammergut, was composed by local musician Hubert von Goisern.

The St. Gilgen International School web site was a challenge to imagine and create. We hope you find it as enjoyable to visit as we did the school itself, and, as always, are looking forwards to hearing your thoughts.

Soziales Netzwerk is a regular publication from the Wiener Hauskrankenpflege, one of wollzelle’s oldest and most esteemed clients.

Earlier this year, a good deal of our energies were focused on putting together issue 14 of the magazine, tackling the sensitive and always-inspiring question of graceful ageing. This last issue featured one of Sacha Goldberger’s photographic masterpieces on the cover, and, we are honoured to say, drew rave reviews from both professionals and the public at large.

When preparing issue 15, which went off the presses in June of this year, we decided to try a complementary approach, one that would build upon the strengths of the previous cover and reassert its key message. This time, however, we wanted to try our hand at a different, free-form medium, to announce the next part of the magazine’s series on ageing.

Indeed, after Ageing gracefully, this issue is all about Ageing creatively. To symbolise creative ageing, we focused on the one person, the one icon, that has remained fresh and inspiring throughout the centuries: the Mona Lisa. Even though its flesh-and-blood model is long gone, both the portrait and the woman have kept their aura of genius and mystery very much intact.

Romina, our graphic designer, found a painting of her “Nonna” and we decided to centre this cover around this family portrait directly inspired by the original Mona Lisa: a discrete reference to the world-known icon, and, in itself, an assertion of its humanity. We took the romantic figure out of its frame and into a world of graffiti-inspired symbols of life, crafting a cover that blurs the line between a classic portrait and illustration. Indeed, the illustrative quality of the cover complements the portrait’s finished and polished feel, suggesting the infinity of worlds one can create for oneself — at any age.

From there, we only had to design 32 inside pages around this original concept, and voilà Issue 15 was ready for the printers!

As always, we hope you enjoy reading this inspiring issue as much as we did putting it together for you. Extra cheers and gratitude go to Evelyn Weismüller, CEO of the Wiener Hauskrankenpflege, and her team for giving us carte blanche, and allowing us to contribute to this wonderful NPO(Non Profit Organization.

We at wollzelle are honoured to entertain a long-term creative relationship with the Wiener Hauskrankenpflege, a non profit organisation that provides home care services in and around Vienna, our hometown. In fact, they have been client of ours since I got on board with them as part of his civil service.

Not only are they a very worthy cause to support, they entrust us with a wide variety of tasks, ranging from interactive design to the production of promotional items. As a creative agency, we like to “mix things up” and the WHS gives us plenty of opportunities to do just that, both in terms of form and function.

Case in point, our latest project: turning a potentially dry document (their 2008 annual report) into an engaging whole that would reflect the warmth and energy that radiate from the institution and empower its staff.

Having complete control over the project allowed us to take many liberties not usually seen with such documents: out with the traditional white gloss stock and in with a natural, lightly processed paper to emphasise the group’s down-to-earth approach.

Working with Ursula Röck, a highly talented, unconventional photographer and friend, we created a collection of unexpected still lives taken at their clients homes, reflecting the everyday reality of those the WHS supports, and emphasising how small touches converge to dramatically improve their overall quality of life. Each shot is both a work of art in itself, and a powerful testimonial of life in Vienna today.

Of course, a report isn’t all fun and games. By bringing design into the visual representation of data, turning pie charts and graph bars into silhouettes and cartoons, we were able to directly link the data with what it represented, thereby facilitating its understanding. Strong type structures the pages and links together the various sections of the report.

High-end printing techniques, such as UV varnishing, completed the effort, and allowed the text to become a de facto design element, working with instead of against the report’s layout.

Design is all about making quality content approachable, and we can think of no better content to work with. The WHS’ 2008 annual report is part official document part catalogue, showing both the human and financial aspects of this respected institution, in a single go.

Aging healthily and gracefully is the key preoccupation of our time. It is also, coincidentally enough, the headline of the latest issue of Soziales Netzwerk, a magazine edited by the Wiener Hauskrankenpflege. It is almost ten years since we started working with this respected Viennese institution, shaping up the content and design of their magazine.

The Wiener Hauskrankenpflege approaches communication seriously. By making themselves known, and by interacting with people of all ages, they reach out to potential new clients, but also further the cause of affordable, quality home care that empowers elderly patients and helps them enjoy their lives to the fullest in spite of the ailments of age.

Issue 14 of their magazine features something unheard of in medical publications: a cover photograph borrowed from the ultra-hip WAD magazine (with kind permission), shot by the highly talented Sacha Goldberger. Indeed, we felt this image, initially developed as a tongue-in-cheek fashion spread for issue #38, embodied just what the doctor ordered.

Growing older may not always be fun, but it doesn’t mean giving up hope, originality or a sense of humor. Keeping a positive and creative outlook on life, surrounding oneself with friends, family and dedicated professionals, such are the secrets of graceful aging — and, one might say, of graceful living at any age.

We at wollzelle are honoured to be part of the Soziales Netzwerk adventure since it first got to press, and to help, in our modest but dedicated way, bridge the gap between the younger and elder generations. To us, this cover is living proof that, regardless of age, we are all united in our humanity and our creativity.

After decades of wishful thinking, probably kick-started by the first microfilm and roll of tape in existence, the paperless office is starting to become a reality. At wollzelle, pitching new projects and brainstorming with clients over a high-speed Internet link is an everyday reality. Our clients rely on us to introduce them to cutting-edge web solutions, and it seems only natural for our meetings to take place over the same medium.

Yet, we feel strongly about paper. Even in a virtual world, the plans of which we are drafting every day, paper has its place. In modern parlance, it’s an industry-standard, it’s energy-efficient, adaptable and compatible with the widest range of humans. What’s more, paper brings a feel to the words and images it presents, something a screen cannot achieve.

Screens are great for interacting, broadcasting and automating. Paper is great to encourage thought, free from technical boundaries. That’s why, for big presentations, we often use paper hand-outs. Building upon our architectural roots, we devised brainstorming portfolios reminiscent of those we once distributed to city planners and urbanists.

Crafting web sites and virtual worlds with down-to-earth tools encourages lateral thinking and creativity. Subtly but surely, it reminds us all that technology is an instrument, not a fact, and an adaptable one at that.

Finally, because paper is becoming a rare sight in the modern office, printed matter becomes inherently more valuable. We find our folders attract more attention, encourage repeat reading and carry more weight than virtual counterparts.

The lesson to be learnt? Stay true to your roots, and devise communication strategies that echo what you stand for. We are about approaching European traditions and cutting-edge technology with an architectural eye. Your own mix will certainly be different, but it pays to remember that technology should complement, and not override, your identity.

Today, we are proud to announce that Thomas Pamminger, our founding father, has just been featured in Karrieren, a brand-new publication from TU Vienna, showcasing the careers and accomplishments of its brightest alumni.

Part inspiration for aspirant students, part documentary on the vibrant life of today’s Vienna, this new effort aims to strengthen the relationship the university entertains with its alumni network.

Of course, Thomas is not alone in there. The whole publication can be downloaded here. Proceed to page 46 for a glimpse into wollzelle.

also in Kooperationen

Andreas Hofer, supervisor of our founders’ master thesis in 2004, just sent us this issue of Kooperationen, a publication dedicated to showcasing the new and exciting ways TU Vienna crafted a long-standing partnership with the National University Lviv Polytechnic. Today, both universities carry out numerous joint activities, benefiting both students and faculty.

Published in this issue is an excerpt of the aforementioned thesis entitled City Branding: City Image and City Profile. Those interested can check out page 47 of the fascicule, bearing ISBN 978-3-902459-12-1.

In the fall of 2008, we were busy designing and orchestrating the production of a great many promotional items bearing the colours of the Wiener Hauskrankenpflege, an agency that provides home care services in and around Vienna, our hometown. The aim was to create tokens and presents for clients and personnel (e.g. calendars, sticky-notes, pens, watches, umbrellas…), which could also be handed out at certain events.

The wooden pen depicted above is doubly special. Indeed, the Wiener Hauskrankenpflege operates hand-held terminals to organise and control work protocols meaning clients, who are often elderly, are required to sign on a screen to confirm various actions. This wooden pen has been specially designed to work with this modern technology, all the while providing a comfortable, familiar sensory experience. Furthermore, it was manufactured by volunteers enrolled in a special care programme.

We at wollzelle loved this project, in no little part because of its diversity — each object had unique design and production requirements. From a visual standpoint, our personal favourite is the green umbrella, because it allowed us to introduce a new typographic device for the WHS, thereby instating a shorter, purely visual mark that can be placed on objects too small to support the full word-mark effectively.

Stay tuned for more, and be sure to check out the latest WHS magazine issue, which will roll off the presses in the coming days.

wollzelle is a photo buff’s haven. Over the years, we have had the honour of devising identities for some of the biggest names in photography, design and fashion. fluxiom, our asset manager, is used by countless professionals to build books and portfolios.

Today, we’re revisiting an old favorite, the web site of Peter Rigaud, a Vienna-based photographer with clients around the world and across all major industries.

Whether working on one of his artistic projects, snapping shots for advertisements or framing portraits for personal or editorial use, Peter’s work always marries a strong, precise structure with fluid and unexpected movement.

Peter’s home page originally went live in 2001. Its current design has evolved little since its inception in 2003. As his projects have grown and evolved, however, the time was ripe to add a new Publications section, presenting the many magazines into which his work is featured as well as the books dedicated to his work and career.

If you aren’t familiar with Peter’s art, we encourage it to give it a look. As always, your comments and feedback are very much welcome!

Did you know, however, about our darker side? At night, wollzelle engineers come out of their orange coats and roam neon-lit data centres to manage heavy-duty storage gear, high-speed network links and redundant power supplies.

Of course, we’re not quite the mad rocket scientists! We do, however, have a genuine passion for technology. Why, might you ask? Simply because aesthetics make design attractive, but method makes it work. We at wollzelle aim to excel in both.

From this layered approach was born fluxiom, a novel online file manager that aims to annihilate all clutter through the effective use of the latest technologies in storage, search and sharing. Its technical core is wrapped in pure wollzelle design, making it a snap — and, we hope, a joy — to use.

To celebrate fluxiom’s latest accomplishments, we have recently introduced our first free plan.

If you too feel encumbered by files and dragged down by the demands of asset management, you can give fluxiom a spin, and try its most popular features for as long as you wish, without any financial commitment. Once you feel ready, heavier-duty plans are only a click away.

Of course, we couldn’t let the occasion go by without putting together a little video for you. It presents fluxiom and its unique approach to data management better than words ever could. It also introduces a series of features designed to help you manage your own data more effectively.

Co-op is nice and refreshing approach to track time based on harvest. A bit of twitter here, a bit of campfire there, and a dash of backpack journal. E voila! Nice work! We use it for a couple of days now and it’s very promising, here is our co-op Fluid icon we just made.

The latest issue of the magazine Soziales Netzwerk, which we art direct, features a very nice article about an elderly lady “aunt Nelly” who rearranged her home accommodation by getting rid of all the furniture, hiring an architect and turning it into her own space.

Lately we built a little widget we’d like to share. It allows you to skin a standard multiple selectbox. Here is the demo page you can also download the source via github it’s free. We have more in the drawer and hopefully find time to share those little snippets as well.

“Huge images and a smart way to navigate through the imagery …” were the main objectives for the new website we did for makup artist Sarira Krueger.

The design is focusing the imagery. During the process we always had this idea of an “endless-carousel” navigation in mind which allows us to get along without conventional controls enabling the visitor to easily browse the images. Enjoy: www.sarira.com

fluxiom comes with an awesome interface and lots of UI effects. So, it’s logical that the fluxiom web site could use a little bit more visual eye candy, and we’ve worked hard to relaunch it in new glory.

First thing, we’ve reduced the start page to provide a nice and welcoming introduction to fluxiom:

Second, we added more details on the features page, including more and richer screenshots (try zooming in!). And sure enough some cool effects like our Rocket Columns on the features and the fluxUp! pages, when switching tabs.

The new fluxiom site features screenshots and images from Viennese photographer Christof Wagner, who allowed us to show off fluxiom by using his very own fluxiom account. A big thank you!

And, last but not least, we’ve added real-time searching on the fluxiom blog:

It seems that new districts spring up like mushrooms in Vienna. One of them is the new business park called “town-town” near Landstraße. In the middle of millions and millions of office buildings is this small new and cool restaurant called yellow-deli. We are responsible for the naming, corporate design, offline and online media. Here are some examples:

Finally the 11th issue dialogue between generations is out now! It is published by the non-profit organisation Wiener Hauskrankenpflege and the free magazine features articles about health and active aging and also professional articles about home based-care and primary nursing.

Since the first issue (published in June 2003) where we volunteered to help with the initial start of this ambitious project we take care of the creative process: art direction, graphic design, layout and visual identity. It’s always a great experience to get insight into other professions and so there’s no risk of getting stuck in a rut ;)

Page a professional magazine for creative media design, publishing and trends, reviewed our webservice Fluxiom in their current issue. Page is a leading design and publishing magazine in the german-speaking area.

It will be interesting if this has any effect on the geographical distribution of our customers. Right now only eight percent of our users are from german speaking countries (as of the October 1, 2006). In general over 80 percent of our customers are outside the EU.

For those of you interested in a little “behind-the-scenes” glimpse, here’s what happened after the first draft of the layout was complete, with the Illustrator file not saved until to this point (of course):

Since it’s humble beginnings as an effects add-on to Prototype and coming directly out of what we at wollzelle needed for fluxiom, it’s seen many uses on high- and not-so-high-level web sites, plus it’s covered in many articles all over the web and the blogosphere and all kindsofbooks.

Conservative estimates are that script.aculo.us has had more than a million downloads (counting the packages from the script.aculo.us download site, and the inclusions within frameworks, first and foremost Ruby on Rails).

script.aculo.us was an enormous success (it ranks #4 in the del.icio.us all-time popular sites!) and personally I’m very proud of it (and all the people that contributed to it!).

A big thanks at all the contributors— let’s see if we can make the second year as exciting as the first.

We are currently in phase 2 of our private beta. Users around the globe are putting Fluxiom through its paces. Thanks to everyone! We are also announcing the new Fluxiom blog at blog.fluxiom.com where you’ll find some behind the scenes information as well as feature descriptions and other teasers.

Toms and I wrote an article about the urban career of the city of Yalta for the book Urbane Metamorphosen für die Krim (urban metamorphoses for the crimea). We were invited to bring up our thoughts in this issue because we wrote our diploma thesis about citybranding concepts for lviv (a city in the Ukraine) and also made a project about future development in Yalta. We travelled a lot around the Ukraine— we love this country and all the movement that is going on there.

The book is published by the urban design and landscape architecture institute at the technical university in Vienna and is available to buy.

making it 2#, a one year project wollzelle was a part of under the “codename” raumspray, is over. We implemented a realtime audio analyzing and 3D visualization application called UNCODE for this art project (plus, we did some sweaty office remodelling…)

The new website of the Wiener Hauskrankenpflege is now online. The site is tuned to be as accessible as possible, so that clients that have disabilities can access the information easily. We think that accessibility and cool design can work great together.

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The utmost care has been taken to ensure that the information published on this website is both accurate and reliable. However, Wollzelle assumes no liability whatsoever for the correctness of the published information and the accuracy of the presentation. This website also contains links (hyperlinks) to other internet sites. Despite careful verification, Wollzelle accepts no responsibility whatsoever for the content of any external linked sites. Responsibility for the content of these sites lies solely with their respective owners and operators.